~ Critics ~
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Critics |
Version March 2001
Comments, critics & awards
[Snippets]
[comments & critics]
[awards]
Well... it is very important to use feedback to ameliorate & change... I believe
that "awards" are
less important than "critics", since you can better use the latter to ameliorate your
work and
develop...
For various reasons I tend to neglect this
section of my site... I'll publish from now on only "critics" that have teached
me something and only "awards" that did move me somehow.
| Snippets (mostly 'awarding') |
http://www.gci275.com/searches.shtml:
Searchlores: Quirky resoruce with some esoteric knowledge
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/16725.html:
Fravia+: Very original site devoted to searching/penetrating the Net with creativity.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/WWW/Searching_the_Web/Help_and_Tutorials/:
Web Searchlores -
Very advanced searching strategies (ie design your own searchbots). Site is strange and almost un-navigable but many gems lurk within.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=fravia:
(thing) by SpongePuppy
Well respected resource with regard to all forms in internet person tracking, reverse engineering and reality cracking, all placed in a legal context. Website is located at www.fravia.org.
Many of the resources posted here are made by real-life reverse engineers,
reality crackers and spammer hunters. Shares a very similar sentiment to, but
no allicance with SPUTUM.
(person) by brainwave
Fravia is a great teacher of many things obscure.
Since this was first noded (he || she) has retired from reverse engineering.
(He || She) maintains (his || her) studies on searching, anonymity, stalking
(the opposite of anonymity), ad-busting (i.e. getting rid of advertisements),
and software protection at http://www.searchlores.org/
http://radified.com/index2.html:
Every so often I stumble upon an especially interesting site. Today I came
across such a site: Searchlores- Advanced Internet search strategies. Never
seen a site like this. First thing to get my attention was on the Welcome page here,
where he says,
you won't find any advertisements whatsoever on this site...
The site makes use of Latin verbiage & sparse but interesting graphics... The page on reality
cracking is most interesting, too. Could easily spend a week at this site .. seems like a whole sub-culture unto itself.
[Mammon_]
[Kuririn]
[Servo]
Mammon_ [February 2000]
Well well well, I see we have not been idle :)
The site is well laid out [style sheets ?!? ;) ]. I
see you have not totally
abandoned cracking-style stuff ['other stuff'], but
have moved it far into
the background where it will be unobtrusive. This is,
in my opinion, a good
move ... the cracking nature of the previous site
tended to hold it back
from plunging whole-heartedly in a new direction. It
seemed people thought
you owed them the right to publish their essays on
your site...
Lots of stuff to read, though thankfully you do not
yet have it all written.
I assume you will cover all the archie/ftpsearch/usual
channels, but are you
going to move into the MP3/warez/p0rn world with
discussions of Hotline,
Napster, and other such 'undernet' protocols? They are
proprietary in a
certain sense, but are reversed and re-implemented on
a daily basis. The
reversals themselves --documented in many places, e.g.
with Napster -- would
make excellent advanced lessons. Also,
Perl/Tcl/Java[ugh] -- some perl
examples of ferrets etc would be good to throw into
the intermediate
section. I started a perl search-engine writing
tutorial for Jeff awhile
back ... if you are pressed for content [right! ;) ] I
can finish it. I
think it is still at
www.eccentrica.org/Mammon/sprawl/jeff.doc
in rough
form. Then there is the whole server-side Javascript
mess, and servlets, and
jhtml, and Dynamo/JavaApp servers, and DBIs, and ASP
[remember the ? trick?
:) ], and a host of other web-related junk I now have
to deal with at
work...
http://www.searchlores.org/evaluate.htm
I like it :)
http://www.searchlores.org/trolls.htm
...I'll wait for you to finish it
well, enough page-by=page. It looks good. I don't know
if you are planning
to touch on the hacker end of the spectrum, vis-a-vis
host scanning and
such. Check TLC and PSS if you do.
Some tools you may want to check: Biew [a hex editor,
like hiew, for dos and
linux, with source, free], GoVest [a debugger for
win32], and perhaps Qweb
if it is ever finished [supposedly an ISO compiant web
browser]. And I
believe you know already proxyhunter, a win32 tool for
finding proxies.
Perhaps a lesson on using range [multi-IP target] port
scanners to find
proxies would be good. Much easier on unix than
windows, natch, though Perl
enables this to be implemented anywhere.
One more of my back-burner projects is playing with
neural networks for
unconventional applications [specifically, for
decompiling and for
web/archive/file searching]. The idea of a NN or
expert system is that it
can be trained to mimic human decisions -- thus, you
'train' it to mimic
your own decision making process, whether that
decision id whether a webpage
is worth looking at, whether a block of code is a
switch statement or a
while statement, etc.
Knotty is looking into NNets as well for school, so
I'll have to bug him for
info :) But these projects will have to wait until I
am a little more
settled in , and for the linux debugger to get
somewhat functional.
>> PS: Your comments / critics / new cloaths of the
>> emperor sarcasms / suggestions / proposals /
>> CONTRIBUTIONS / cheap remarks / helpful hints /
>> whatever... on my new site are WELCOME and NEEDED.
Heheheh...your certainly know my flavour of critique
;)
_m
Kuririn [February 2000]
Fravia+,
no, it's rarely important to reply in cases like this e-mail; consider
it a message-in-a-bottle found on the beach. you may even spit
into it and toss it back ;)
firstly: you have quite a beautiful study at searchlores.com, my compliments.
secondly: and perhaps useful, did you see the (non-technical) article written
in the Feb. 2000 of Wired (perhaps an awful publication)... nevertheless the
article may interest you (as a potential line of inquiry).
Start Making Sense
The world's smartest search engine took 250 years to build. Autonomy is here.
By Steve Silberman
Possible Keywords: Michael Lynch (founder)
Reverand Thomas Bayes (CF Bayes Formula: Probability)
Autonomy/University of Cambridge ...
PS: I was going to try an idea on your old mb, i.e., to speak of searching
and writing (how
one is limited as you say in their tools), and also how one is limited by
the problem of
needing a descriptor/description --for example trying to descrive a texture (or
even to find a few relevent words about it--these to me are most difficult).
The natural approach to writing seems to be quite similar to the natural
approach to searching... (at
its most sophisticated)
or perhaps I am muddled.
anyway, i've got to ...
kuririn
Servo [February 2000]
Fravia+,
I am delighted to find your new site and endeavor since searching became
my first love of the web. As I have time I will try to assemble some
essays for you or at least pass on useful snippets of info for you to
use as you see fit.
Having found your new site and some reference to the useful methods of
searching with altavista, I did not see a reference to scooter's manual
at
http://altavista.software.digital.com/docs/search/reference_manual.pdf
All serious searchers should obtain and read this
manual, particularly
those sections on searching the indexes built by scooter since they
apply to using altavista's public search engine. While much of the text
is related to using scooter to build indexes and making the required
settings, quite a bit is about using the search and programming
scooter's API. Those sections of building indexes and programming will
help some searchers to better understand the spider itself.
One example of the knowledge in searching they will learn is the variety
of wildcards allowed, ie *, ? and ** While many may be familiar with the
* which can be used after 3 leading characters to represent up to 5
characters they will also learn they may use the ? with the same
restrictions to represent a single character which will sometimes help
to filter the results. They will also learn of the double ** which can
be used to represent an unlimited number of characters instead of the 5
represented by * alone.
Students of the art will also find much more about boolean queries,
literal searches, ranking, filtering and more. Feel free to use this
snippet if desired without credit if you wish. Pass along the url of the
manual directly or test the students to find it if they can. Perhaps
this url may be given with a challenge to the students to find the links
of manuals for the other spiders of the web :-)
Servo
Well I consider the following snippets "awards", sortof, yet I hope they
may be of some use for the readers and not
only an expression of my useless egotrips...
[Forseti+]
[Tapu]
[Jeff]
+Forseti's email (March 2000)
Fravia+, I was just now reading your pages when I realized how beneficial it has
been to me to re-read the many sections and essays therein. While each
initial reading provides tools to take out into the world to reverse it, (I remember going to the market after reading +ORC's supermarket
[essay], what a
scene!) re-reading is even more helpful.
Amidst the chaos of my life, I find bits of knowledge and experience
coming to light to aid my works at the most opportune moments, a constant
mixing of 'now' and experience mingling to provide a path and a solution.
Surely I am not alone in this, but new information and situations often
obscure or resist reversing by their 'newness'. Just as listening again to
a favorite piece of music or re-reading a favorite book or watching a
favorite film will place me in a reflective mindset, so does re-reading
the essays and tips and tools of our reversing lores. Then a bit of info
picked up in a new email or read in the paper suddenly fits into a puzzle
I was not aware of on the edge of my mind, and a new understanding
happens. "If your life does not seem strange to you..." A constant stream
of reversing matters present and re-present opportunities to understand
and learn.
I think you too realize this, and re-read things almost unconsciously as a
linguist, and of course as a wanderer in the codewoods. Yet perhaps this
intuition is so deep you have not mentioned it 'out loud' so often in your
writings. Of course the 'lores' pages are quite back to a state of 'you'll
never be able to count them all' or maybe it's been staring me down
through my electron gun the whole time :) but I think it's easy to
underestimate reviewing and re-reading as valuable practices,
A most important 'tip' for beginners and ~S~ alike:
Read, comprehend,
go away and live,
then re-read and know.
wisdom and life
met on the road
time stopped,
did you see?
+forseti
Tapu's email (March 2000)
Fravia+,
I saw your searchlores site and it is wonderful!
It fills a much-needed gap, you know the web passed
the 1 billion mark a few months ago, according to news
reports, although how this figure was arrived at is
anybody's guess. you may remember it had already been
established by the same News Lords some time before
that the search engines only have a fraction of it in
their databases. (altavista was the winner, with 16%,
but that was before they got bought, changed their
algorithm, and apparently discarded 60 or 70% of
whatever they did have).
It is enlightening and frightening to see search
techniques so all grown up and quantified. I continue
to rely on the tried and true psi tracking factor, and
plain old fashioned Voodoo; I believe the latter is
used extensively by the search engines themselves.
If I had any money I would come to Europe tomorrow. I
am becoming less optimistic about the US as an
appropriate home for people who do not see Rwanda as
the societal ideal to which we all should aspire.
On behalf of earth, thank you for existing and sharing
yourself.
Tapu
Jeff's 'poem' (December 2000)
hummmmmm; a contest...
I take it this is the basis of the contest:
---> Further on I was wondering if you could take some times to show this
---> e-tribe what Fravia+ represent to you be it in image or in words.
of a ghostly voice i've never heard
from ashes comes this fiery bird
of cultures ideas languages and lore
he sends me places I never looked before
from music litature code and text
I never know where I'll be off to next
and when I'm lost and shake my head
I know a place, it's deep it's said
where answers sleep but wide awake
they shake you up for your own sake
These archived halls of knowledge there
for those who come for those that dare
contain some answers, and riddles too
these ghostly tendrils guiding you
maintained with care you SEE its pride
just knock n open come inside
imagine the time to move each stone
and placed just so, becomes a home
the walls are warm and filled with sound
of voices invited from all around
above the rest the host is, I think
a teacher who gives to me a half full drink.
(c) III Millennium: [fravia+],
all rights reserved and reversed